On 7th October Havant Borough councillors unanimously passed a vote of no confidence in the local water company Southern Water. I spoke at their meeting to say: “I’ve come today because it’s an opportunity to actually highlight the problems there are with Southern Water. The water companies are acting illegally, because they are not doing the job that they were designed for, or the commitment that they’ve taken on. They’re dumping sewage and they are actually making life quite miserable for all sorts of people who would like to be able to paddle in streams, or let their dogs go into rivers, or want to swim off a seashore. I was at Langstone Quay today, and there were used cotton buds and used lavatory paper all over the quayside that clearly has been washed over from a high tide from sewage. That is just unacceptable. In some places where sewage is going into watercourses, ecosystems are being destroyed because they can’t cope with the level of pollution. It’s not only human faeces and so on, but also a lot of forever chemicals, and things like oestrogen, which are really messing up life cycles of various creatures.”

Local news coverage here: Why does Havant Borough Council have no confidence in Southern Water?